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Addressing the Democratic Deficit in Local News Through Positive Plurality Or, Why We Need a UK Alternative of the Knight News Challenge

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Addressing the Democratic Deficit in Local News Through Positive Plurality Or, Why We Need a UK Alternative of the Knight News Challenge Addressing the Democratic Deficit in Local News through Positive Plurality Or, why we need a UK alternative of the Knight News Challenge October 2014 Martin Moore CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 3 SUMMARY 4 THE PROBLEM 7 Crisis in local newspapers 7 Growth of hyperlocals 10 Few armchair auditors 13 Local TV: unable to fill the deficit 16 Lack of enabling platforms and services 18 THE OPPORTUNITY 20 Significant innovation in the US 22 Less innovation in the UK 24 Why the difference? 27 CONTESTABLE FUNDING 30 The benefits of contestable funding 30 On the Knight News Challenge 32 The potential benefits of contestable funding 34 Making the awards 36 DELIVERY 37 How to fill a contestable funding pot 37 A closing window of opportunity 40 CONCLUSION 41 INTRODUCTION There is a window of opportunity for the UK government to seed, through an independently run competition, a flowering of innovation in news and information and civic technology at a local level, without spending a penny of taxpayers’ money. Innovation in local news and information is desperately needed to address the decline in local newspapers and to help support and reinvent local news and community information for the 21st century. Without such reinvention we risk weakening our civic communities and our local authorities becoming unaccountable. The window of opportunity will only exist for a short while. Rarely has there been such a range of inexpensive tools available to innovate in news and information – from publishing platforms to geo- location services. New sources of news are emerging and new research shows the important role they are beginning to perform. But their growth is fragile and nascent. Without support it is likely to remain so. The opportunity for innovation and growth will decline as non-UK technology platforms further colonise local media space. As listings and advertising migrate further to Google My Business and Adsense, or to Facebook and its related mobile platforms, it will become harder for independent local media to thrive. At the same local media provision will become heavily reliant on foreign delivery platforms. A relatively small amount of money, distributed competitively, could – in this critical period – transform the local media environment. There are a range of options for sourcing these funds, described later, none of which need to be taken from existing public funds. This short paper lays out the problem, shows why we find ourselves in this position, and outlines a plan for how to address it. MEDIA STANDARDS TRUST 3 SUMMARY Local newspapers are in crisis. The number of professional journalists reporting on local news has plummeted in the last decade. There are now areas of the UK where there is virtually no professional news reporting at all. Local Councils now regularly go unattended and unreported.1 There is a slowly growing network of hyperlocals, and many are performing important community and democratic functions, but the network is far from universal and is varied in both depth and quality. A 2013 study identified 496 active hyperlocal sites across the UK.2 These are not spread consistently across the UK. In the whole of Wales there are fewer than 30 hyperlocal sites. The ‘army of armchair auditors’ using open data to keep public authorities accountable, that the 2010 Coalition government looked forward to when it promised the most transparent government ever, has yet to materialize.3 There are open data enthusiasts but they are still a rare breed and a long way from replacing the traditional role of our local press. Although there are a handful of valuable UK third party applications that enable accountability and public engagement, such as FixMyStreet and OpenlyLocal, these are limited in number and in scale. At the same time the opportunity for innovation in this area is huge. Relatively small investments can have an impact far beyond their effect in other sectors. This is because the tools available for innovating – with regards publishing, distributing and promoting news and information – are widely available at low cost. There has been innovation in local news and community information in the UK, but nothing like on the scale there has been in the US. In the US $67m was invested in civic technology through Foundation grants alone 1 See, for example, Local Journalism and Local Media: making the local news, edited by Bob Franklin (Routledge 2006), Turning Around the Tanker: Implementing Trinity Mirror’s Online Strategy. Cardiff University School of Journalism Media and Cultural Studies, Andy Williams & Bob Franklin (2007), 2 Hyperlocal Publishing in the UK – A 2013 Snapshot, Dave Harte 3 “The simple task of putting spending online will open the doors to an army of armchair auditors who will be able to see at a glance exactly where millions of pounds spent last year went”, Eric Pickles, August 2010, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/eric-pickles-shows- us-the-money-as-departmental-books-are-opened-to-an-army-of-armchair-auditors Addressing the Democratic Deficit in Local News through Positive Plurality 4 between 2011 and 2013 (five times more than this was invested by the private sector).4 This investment has led to widespread innovation, in everything from digital tools to involve people more closely in planning decisions (e.g. OpenPlans.org), to crowdfunding platforms for civic projects and engagement (e.g. Citizinvestor.com) to private social networks for your neighbourhood (e.g. NextDoor.com). The difference between the US and the UK is not due to lack of will or expertise, but to material factors, most notably: 1. Recognized need – in the US they have recognized, for almost a decade, the crisis in provision of local news and information. It has still to be recognized to the same degree in the UK. 2. Charity status – in the US news organisations can set themselves up as non-profits with charitable - 501c3 – status. This option is not available in the UK. 3. Large foundations with this purpose – in the US there are a number of large US foundations that focus on supporting innovation in this area. 4. Funds invested – the amount of money invested in local news innovation and civic technology in the US – by philanthropic and private investors - dwarfs the amount invested in the UK (the Knight Foundation identified 237 separate major investors in US civic tech between 2011-2013).5 Were contestable funds available, as there have been in the US, for which individuals and organisations could compete for small grants, the effects – on democratic engagement, on social cohesion, and on local enterprise – could be significant. Contestable funding could generate a virtuous circle. It could address a significant democratic dilemma. It could generate lots of interest, enthusiasm and effort from those who might not otherwise have participated in this area. It could, based on US precedent, spark private as well as Foundation funding. It could create a flowering of innovation and information about local communities. It has the potential to leave a legacy of enterprise, experience and invention that would put the UK at the forefront of digital information development. 4 The Emergence of Civic Tech: Investments in a Growing Field, Knight Foundation (2013) 5 The Emergence of Civic Tech (2013) MEDIA STANDARDS TRUST 5 This would not need to be funded through existing public funds, or through the diversion of public money from elsewhere. There are at least three ways in which such a fund could be filled: 1. A one-off contribution from Google and/or other digital intermediaries. 2. An annual charge for the collection and commercial use of personal data. 3. A voucher scheme through which each adult receives a voucher once a year, which s/he can donate to any non-profit news or information service of his/her choice. Each of these options is described below. Contestable funding could generate a welter of innovation in the collection and provision of public interest news and information at a local level. Without such contestable funding, access to public interest local news and information will become increasingly unequal, and we will become more and more reliant on US digital platforms and technologies. This reliance will not only limit the power and scope of UK producers, but will siphon funds away from local communities and hinder local democracy. Addressing the Democratic Deficit in Local News through Positive Plurality 6 THE PROBLEM Crisis in local newspapers Local newspapers are in crisis. The funding model for the local press has “The funding collapsed. In the five years between 2005 and 2010 the revenue of the four leading local newspaper companies in the UK dropped by between 23% and model for the 53%.6 This led to sustained cost cutting, including a long series of journalist job cuts. In south Wales, for example, the number of editorial and production local press staff at Media Wales dropped from almost 700 in 1999 to 136 in 2010.7 has collapsed In some areas this has left one senior reporter per newspaper: there are ‘just six senior reporters and five trainees to cover the seven remaining local titles in communities like Pontypridd, Merthyr, Aberdare, Llantrisant, and the entire Rhondda Valleys’ (A Williams). In other areas like Port Talbot there is no longer a dedicated local newspaper. This is not just the case in Wales. Journalists have been cut across the local press. The “latest company results from Johnston Press state that it cut 1,300 jobs in 2012, some 23 per cent of the workforce’ James Harding – head of BBC news – said in January 2014, ‘almost half the employees of Northcliffe Media went between 2008 and 2012, falling from 4,200 to 2,200 according to its owners the Daily Mail & General Trust.
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